Methinks the Lady’s Competitors Doth Protest Too Much

Like everyone else, I had heard rumours and read the odd blog post about Mark Thompson’s Fleming Memorial Lecture last night. [Mark is the Director-General of the BBC]. And I thought to myself, it could just be possible that the Beeb were about to get it. Then, Malc of Accidental Light bludgeoned me into reading the full text of the lecture. Just by saying one word. Seminal. Thank you Malc.

Anyone interested in the future of what was “big media”, or for that matter the fast-converging TMT sector, should read the full text. Which you can find here. I’ve now read it fully once, and absolutely love what it says. I’m not going to summarise it, instead I will encourage you to read it for yourself.
Sure, there are pitfalls. Some will worry that product placement and stealth advertising are unavoidable, and that the strategy espoused will actually help make this happen. I don’t care. If there was something I worried about, it would be a lack of detail about platform/device independence from a consumer standpoint. More later.

In the meantime, take a look at the squeals coming from the trad feeding trough, linked here. Rivals criticise BBC strategy. Hilarious.

If they pull this off (and I hope they will) then I look forward to watching Walking With Dinosaurs (the Remake), chronicling the end of old media. Because that’s what it looks like.

Related

That’s pretty heady stuff, particularly from the mainstream. Mr Thompson DOES seem to get it, right down to people wanting to remix/timeshift and access entertainment on their terms and in their timeframe – he sounds like he’s been reading Fred Wilson (http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/) …